For some time now, Google has had a list of search terms that it limits the functionality of, not offering suggestions through instant search and you’ll need to actually hit the enter key to see any results pertaining to those terms. No one knows exactly how many words are on the list, but they’re almost all related to – in the eyes of Google and several lobby groups – piracy. There’s no definitive list of search terms either, but we know a few and two of those have just been removed, as they now appear to be working normally.

The ones in question both relate to torrent advocate and uTorrent creator, BitTorrent Inc., a company that has argued for a long time that: torrents don’t equal piracy. It seems that its efforts haven’t gone to waste, as the terms: uTorrent and BitTorrent now work just the same as every other search term.

As TorrentFreak points out, other long standing blocked terms like “isohunt,” and “torrent,” still have reduced functionality, which makes you wonder if Gary Fung – the man behind long standing torrent search site, Isohunt – kicked up enough of a fuss, if his site would receive the same treatment?

The timing for this move by Google is a good sign too, as it’s been accused by many lobby groups in the past of facilitating piracy. It was thought for a time that this might lead to Google gradually restricting access to such sites, in the same manner as nationwide ISP blocks. However, that doesn’t appear likely any time soon.

KitGuru Says: Good on Google for opening things up a bit more. If it could be fair to other torrent related sites/content too, that’d be even better.